Boss gets angry

Bruce Springsteen’s next album will be his angriest yet, sources claimed. The singer-songwriter, always at his most creative during bleak economic times, will release his 24th album early in 2012, and it will address the current global depression.

A Springsteen associate who has heard the album told the Hollywood Reporter, "He gets into economic justice quite a bit. It's very rock'n'roll. He feels it's the angriest album he's ever made."

Springsteen’s last release, in 2010, was The Promise, a critically-acclaimed collection of demos and outtakes from the 1978 Darkness On The Edge Of Town sessions. The critical success of that collection may have inspired Springsteen to return to the subjects that inspired those songs.

The Darkness album, and its follow-up, The River, addressed an America facing economic decline, industries closing down and disillusioned veterans returning from foreign wars to find no welcome in their homeland. More than 30 years later, the USA faces all the same problems.

The advantage of being a veteran rocker is that the same social and political issues have a tendency to repeat themselves, and Springsteen’s songs are relevant all over again.

Speculation suggests the album should be released around March, when Springsteen delivers the keynote speech at the SXSW Festival in Austin Texas. The E Street Band have UK dates booked in June and July, in Sunderland, Manchester, the Isle of Wight and London.

The shows will be poignant, as Springsteen tours without long-time band members Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, who both died in 2011.